Lee Nichol is editor of The Essential David Bohm (Routledge) and a former teacher at Oak Grove School in Ojai, California

Beginning
in 1985, David Bohm put forward a series of propositions regarding a new
vision for contemporary dialogue. This vision received considerable attention
throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. But despite such widespread
interest in Bohm's vision, the sustainability of dialogue seems to have
been erratic, even meager.

'I think people are not doing enough
work on their own, apart from the dialogue groups'

Shortly before his death in 1992, David Bohm made a curious remark regarding the vagaries of dialogue. The
conversation had to do with why dialogue groups struggled so much, why
many people felt discouraged with the process after serious and sustained
attempts to exploit its potential. 'I think people are not doing enough
work on their own, apart from the dialogue groups,' Bohm offered.
1

This observation seems paradoxical,
not least because dialogue is by general definition a collaborative process,
and by Bohm's definition one which seeks to move beyond a sense of strict
individualism and open into a domain of collective,participatory fellowship.
The notion of working 'on one's own' would seem to circumvent the very
essence of dialogue itself.

We can begin to unravel this paradox
by recognizing that Bohm's work in dialogue derives from a larger context
of inquiry that had captured his imagination for decades. In tracing the
origins of Bohm's ideas on dialogue, we find that virtually all of his
published material on this topic was excerpted from meetings and seminars
in which dialogue was an outgrowth of more fundamental issues regarding
the nature of consciousness and experience per se. In most of these seminars
an examination of the ego, and the ego's compulsive insistence on stabilizing
its perceived territory, played a central role. Bohm claims that the ramifications
of the ego process - both individual and collective - are at the root
of human fragmentation and suffering. At the heart of his dialogue proposal
was the prospect that awareness of the movement of ego, willingly engaged
in by a number of people simultaneously, might quicken insights into the
ego process that could take much longer if approached only on an individual
basis.

After a few years of these meetings,
Bohm's thoughts on dialogue were collected in a small self-published booklet,
On Dialogue. Intended primarily for distribution to those on the mailing
lists of the 'Bohm seminars' this booklet sold a surprising 20,000 copies.2
While covering many of the central features of dialogue, the booklet nonetheless
contained relatively little overt emphasis on the nature of the ego. This
was in part due to the fact that its initial target audience was already
familiar with this territory, either through having attended meetings
with Bohm or through having read transcripts of those meetings. Effectively,
then, a 'shorthand' version of dialogue - a pithy but incomplete extraction
- found its way into mainstream culture.

This contextual gap between 'short-hand'
dialogue and Bohm's larger themes helps to clarify his suggestion that
'people need to do more work on their own.' Bohm was likely signaling
the need to reintegrate the shorthand dialogue vision with its origin
- that is, a keen and sustained awareness of the movement of the ego in
daily life. Working outside the dialogue setting, and bringing the fruit
of that inquiry back into the group, might provide the missing element
that could bring dialogue to its full potential.

Three Aspects of Wholeness

In attempting to re-establish the wholeness
of Bohm's vision, we will examine three areas that are often absent from
popular presentations of dialogue. Though hardly exhaustive, this short
list - the self-image, the body, and meaning - will perhaps give some indication
of the richness of inquiry that is available to those interested in the
full scope of Bohm's inquiry. As outlined here, these three areas are
explored as they might look if a person were to work 'on their own.' How
this exploration might look in the context of a dialogue group is a fascinating
topic, perhaps one to be pursued in a later essay.

The Self-Image

The first area is self-image, or
ego. As it will be discussed here, ego is not necessarily a chest-beating,
get-out-of-my-way-I'm-the-best-in-the-world mentality. Rather, basic
ego, or self-image, is simply the sense that wherever I go, whatever I
do, whatever I think, there is a portable 'me' that is always there -
the very one who goes, does, and thinks. This sense of 'me' as an essential
and indispensable interior entity seems to form the basis for our existence
in the world; all aspects of experience are felt to flow from it, and
refer back to it.

content of the self-image is identical
with our image of 'the world' - any value or assumption that is experienced
internally has an external correlate, usually perceived as 'how things
are'

Coexistent with this sense of 'me'
is an enormous cache of values, views, assumptions, aspirations, struggles,
desires, and fears, any one of which may act as the vanguard for the entire
ego structure. In Bohm's view, this content of the self-image is identical
with our image of 'the world' - any value or assumption that is experienced
internally has an external correlate, usually perceived as 'how things
are'. If I see the driver in the lane next to me as bumbling and incompetent,
this would be reflected inwardly by a tacit image of myself as a skillful
and responsive driver. These two apparently different images are actually
as inseparable from one another as one side of a brick is from the other
side. Bohm's term for this mutually dependent structuring was 'self-world
view'. In the remainder of this essay we will thus use the terms ego,
self-image, and self-world view interchangeably.

In contemporary Western civilization,
examination of the self-image is predominantly oriented toward some version
of ego-modification. From this perspective, the basic structure and value
of the ego is taken for granted, the operative question being whether
or not my ego is in satisfactory condition. If it is not in satisfactory
condition, I will follow some kind of methodology for bringing it more
in line with how I want it to be. If my ego desires to perceive itself
as slim, fit, and sexually attractive, I will diet, exercise, or perhaps
have some reconstructive surgery. If the ego desires to perceive itself
as powerful and lordly, it will perhaps go through the machinations of
establishing a business venture with many employees and a visible impact
on society. If the ego desires to perceive itself as spiritual in nature,
it may learn how to meditate and bask in the glow of its newfound spirituality.

It is of course possible that any
of these activities can be undertaken from a benign or practical standpoint,
rather than from strictly ego-driven purposes. I might exercise for sheer
physical exuberance. I might start a business out of necessity or simple
interest. I might learn to meditate out of a genuine inspiration to achieve
clarity and understanding. But more often than not, our motivations and
goals are infused with the potent tinge of basic ego, like the cartoon
character Snoopy: 'Here's the up-and-coming entrepreneur, well on her
way to impressive accomplishments and a daunting reputation,' or equally,
'Here's the down-on-his-luck jilted lover, taking solace in well-warranted
existential angst.' Whatever your scenario of the day, there is no great
mystery in this aspect of our experience. We all know what this ego is
and how it operates; we all know we 'have' one, and we all know everyone
else 'has' one.

From a Bohmian perspective, our
deepest, unarticulated assumptions about this ego process are called into
question. But unlike many other lines of contemporary discourse, Bohm's
approach is distinctly not a process of reformulating or redirecting the
ego, shuffling and substituting one image for another in endless succession.
Nor is this questioning an intellectual pastime intended to discuss some
novel, avant-garde theory of the ego. Finally, it is most certainly not
a game of 'Gotcha!' in which the inevitable display of ego-structures
is seized upon as a dialogical prize.

He often
referred to the ego as a 'thought god', analogous to the 'rain gods' we
sometimes find in various ancient or aboriginal cultures.

In what way, then, does Bohm ask
us to question the ego? To begin with, he suggests that we loosen our
assumption that the ego is a real thing. He proposes that the self-image
may be a kind of imaginary display, a fantasy character used to give coherence
to the massive amount of stimulation that floods us every second. He often
referred to the ego as a 'thought god', analogous to the 'rain gods' we
sometimes find in various ancient or aboriginal cultures. By this he meant
that peoples such as the ancient Greeks seemed to have looked for a simple
way of explaining the vicissitudes of rain, thunder, and lightning, and
came to the conclusion that there was an entity - a rain god - who was
behind the scenes, causing weather to happen. Similarly, in the midst
of the constant flow of thoughts and impressions that make up our consciousness,
we yearn for continuity and coherence, and thus project an image of 'me'
- a thought god behind the scenes, causing thought to happen. This attribution,
of course, is not spontaneously invented anew with every person. We receive
ample help from our social environment when we are very young, learning
unconsciously how to construct this sense of inner entity and invest it
with meaning.

But what if the self-image is really only 'there' when we look for it (continuously), think about it (compulsively),
remember it (reflexively)? What if the feeling of 'me' is a product of the flow of thoughts, rather than the source of them?

In most of the literature available
on dialogue, Bohm uses the term 'assumptions' to signify the activity
by which the ego navigates the world. He of course recognizes that from
a common-sense, practical perspective we need to have certain working
assumptions. We must assume that our car is likely to start when we go
to work in the morning; we must assume that our circle of friends and
relations is at least somewhat reliable and stable. But navigating the
physical and social world via practical assumptions is not what causes
most of the confusion and difficulty in our lives. It is, rather, our
assumptions about who we really are, and how the world should be in relation
to us, that cause us frustration, anger, and dissatisfaction.

However, the shorthand language
of contemporary dialogue discourse tends to leave intact the most basic
assumption of all - the assumption of the solidity and primacy of the
ego. In marginalizing sustained and pointed questioning of the ego per
se, the current dialogue discourse leaves open a stance in which one may
question all manner of one's own assumptions, and the assumptions of others,
but rarely if ever question the basic existence or seeming solidity of
the ego itself.

We could think of this version
of questioning assumptions as serial-horizontal. In this approach we question
assumptions in a perpetual sequence, as though we were driving along a
flat desert highway, 'questioning' each new item that appears through
the windshield. This process is indeed central to the practice of dialogue,
and is by any measure a valuable and enlightening exercise. But our minds
tend to be organized in such fashion that the loosening of one strongly
held assumption will eventually be followed by the strengthening of another
one, or the re-emergence of the old one in a new guise. We can go on this
way for years, perhaps a lifetime, examining the topical features of the
ongoing parade of assumptions that passes through our consciousness. All
the while, the ego - the 'mother of all assumptions' - remains conveniently
shielded from scrutiny by tacitly positioning itself as the one who
is examining the serial assumptions.

holistic-vertical questioning of assumptions is more akin to an archaeological dig, in which we stay with one assumption in a sustained way, ferreting out its generic structure, rather than simply surveying its topically salient features

But if we sense that this approach could indeed go on endlessly without really revealing the core of our
problems, then we may be inspired to explore an alternative. Amply provided in Bohm's larger body of work is a complementary approach to assumptions, one which is holistic rather than serial, vertical in addition to horizontal.
This holistic-vertical questioning of assumptions is more akin to an archaeological dig, in which we stay with one assumption in a sustained way, ferreting out its generic structure, rather than simply surveying its topically salient features.

In a serial approach, I might examine
my ingrained prejudice against very fat people who live in trailer parks.
If I am persistent and sincere, I might gain insight into the causes and
limitations of this prejudice, and thus free myself to a greater or lesser
extent from this prejudice. Next week, I might examine my assumptions
about the motives and intentions of CEOs of multinational corporations.
Through this examination, I will perhaps uncover various fallacies, and
arrive at a less restrictive view of such individuals.

In addition to questioning the assumption, we are now
questioning the questioner

In a holistic approach, I may well
engage in exactly these serial processes, but with one additional, and
crucial, hypothesis: Each particular prejudice or assumption I examine
in sequence is but a temporary display - an advertisement, if you will
- of a deeper generating source: the sense of ego itself. From this perspective,
to ignore my deep assumptions about the existence and veracity of the
ego, in favor of examining its display du jour, is very likely to result
in an endless recycling of modified assumptions. But if I am willing to
see the particular assumptions/displays as flags indicating the more generic
patterning of the ego, it may be possible to enter into a genuinely new
order of insight. In addition to questioning the assumption, we are now
questioning the questioner.

The Body

In exploring the terrain of the
self-image, it is all too easy to slip into a highly abstract and intellectualized
version of our experience. As suggested in the previous section, being
'aware' of assumptions can become a repetitive habit like any other, a
closed intellectual loop that never proceeds significantly beyond the
surface of experience. As a complement to the initial emphasis on 'thinking
through' the nature of the self-world view and its assumptive process,
Bohm proposes that we use the body as a source of immediate, concrete
feedback for our inquiry. While this emphasis on the body is fairly apparent
in Bohm's source material on dialogue, the secondary literature has tended
to minimize or altogether eliminate this aspect of the dialogue process.
In this section we will review in some detail why Bohm sees the body as
an indispensable component in deepening our understanding of both ego
and dialogue.

The most immediate way we can utilize
the body - both in and out of the dialogue process - is to recognize the
body as a highly sensitive and accurate display for disturbances to the
self-image. To do this, Bohm suggests that we expand our attention - usually
focused on our mental reactions arising from provocations to the ego -
to include the physiological correlates of these reactions. These correlates
are not mysteriously hidden away; they are readily apparent if we are
open to seeing them. Consider, for example, that one of my core values
- women have the right to choose whether to abort a fetus - is vehemently
challenged. In addition to my likely thoughts about the challenger ('This
person is venal and reactionary ... he is only concerned about imposing
his views on others ...at the very least he is misguided and ignorant'),
I will also have a cluster of physical signs of disturbance. My heart
may begin to beat faster. My adrenaline may begin to surge. My jaw may
subtly clench. My posture may rigidify.

In normal social intercourse, we
may (a) ignore these physiological signals through force of habit (b) bulldoze
our way past them in order to find a new zone of equilibrium (c) take them
as implicit proof of the rightness of our position. In all such cases
we tend to fall into the default mode of thinking our way forward - we
marshal an array of intellectual arguments and justifications for why
our view is right and good, and why the challenger 's view is wrong and
bad.

However, in such a scenario there
is always a phase in which both aspects - the physiological manifestations
and the internal verbal cogitation - are simultaneously present. Bohm's
suggestion is that at this very point, we experiment with diminishing
our reliance on the 'thinking habit', and allow the physiological correlates
to come more clearly into felt awareness. This in no sense means suppressing
the thoughts, but something more like a figure-ground reversal, in which
our typical structure of our awareness - with thoughts far more dominant
than our physiology - is reversed, with the physiological responses now
coming to the foreground.

Honest attention to the signals in the body will often
give a very different picture of what is happening in our experience than
the ego would like to imagine.

There are a number of reasons why
Bohm suggests experimenting with this figure-ground reversal, and a comprehensive
assessment of them all is well beyond the scope of this essay. But two
points in particular warrant scrutiny. First,there is the 'truthfulness'
aspect of the body. Honest attention to the signals in the body will often
give a very different picture of what is happening in our experience than
the ego would like to imagine. If someone has said something that has
hurt or offended us deeply, we have a lifetime of practice at acting outwardly
as if this hurt did not occur. And once this process of obscuration is
set in motion, we often go so far as to deny - even to ourselves - that
we are hurt. But close, sustained attention to the body, alert to signals
like those mentioned above, makes it difficult to maintain the habit of
obscuring the actual nature of our experience. One effect of giving attention
to the body is thus to bring our conscious awareness more closely in line
with what is actually occurring.

Second, as we attempt to read the
information of the body, and move toward closer alignment between what
is actually happening and what we would like to think is happening, we
will inevitably encounter a certain degree of conflict. This conflict
is directly attributable to physiological information that is contrary
to my self-image. My body tells me that the attitudes and words of a person
I am in interaction with frighten and threaten me. But the self-image
says, 'This is absurd. I shouldn't be threatened by this person or their
views. I can't be weak or vulnerable. I must find a way to regain my solid
ground.'

It is exactly the structure of
this experience, and its many variations (which include the seemingly
opposite experience of gratified self-validation), that can lead us to
the edge of the generic self-world view and open the possibility of an
entirely new way of relating to ourselves and others. For in such moments
we have a vividly clear display of the inner mechanism by which the ego
sustains itself and its fixed views of the world.

On the one hand we have the body
and all that it is signifying: uncomfortable impulses, uninvited surges
of energy, uncharitable thoughts and images, all swirling and mixing in
a dynamic that is, at least inwardly, out of control. On the other hand
there is the apparently stable and unchanging 'internal watcher', the
one who notices these bodily signals and either approves or disapproves
of them, directing or redirecting energy until some satisfactory equilibrium
is found (this 'watcher', not coincidentally, is identical with the 'questioner'
we visited earlier). In trying to clarify the nature of what is happening
in such moments, our first task is simply to be distinctly aware of these
two processes: the movement of energy and impulses, and the sense of an
internal entity who is watching these.

We are now in a position to notice
a subtle but palpable oscillation of neuro-physiological energy that
occurs when the 'observer' attempts to categorize, judge, alter, redirect,
validate, or suppress the display in the body. With a bit of persistence,
it becomes increasingly natural and easy to tune in to this oscillation.
It is sensed as a kind of 'extra' or 'added' impulse, often in conflict
with that of the initial bodily responses. One variation of this would
be the case of self-justification or validation, where the bodily display
would be 'sanctioned' by the watcher - in which case the added impulse
would likely be one of pleasure rather than conflict. But in either case
the relevant factor is the reflexive emergence of the 'extra' impulse,
not whether it is conflictual or pleasurable.

Once we acquire some familiarity
with this dynamic, we can experiment with what happens if we do not sanction
the impulse to categorize or act upon what is displayed in the body. We
may instead simply be aware of the whole of what is going on: the initial
thinking habit, the initial physiological correlates, and the emergence
of a watcher which injects an additional level of discernable energy.
In this case, 'being aware' arises from all our faculties - cognitive,
physiological, and affective. We both 'see' and 'feel' the simultaneous
presence of thoughts, feelings, and the watcher, but without trusting
and following the impulsive interjections of the watcher.

In this way we arrive at a radically
new orientation. Normally in the course of daily life, we follow the dictates
of one of two masters. Either we follow our random thoughts and urges,
or we follow the implicit dictates of the inner watcher, which monitors
the random thoughts and urges, judging and directing them in one way or
other. But now we are watching the watcher, as well as all else that is
happening. This particular awareness is not a disembodied, bird's-eye,
'objective' view, such as occurs in many kinds of introspective analysis;
nor is it the perspective of a so-called 'neutral watcher', which is usually
nothing more than a shift in positioning of the ego. To the contrary,
this awareness is completely within all that is occurring. It is alert
to all cognitive, physiological, and affective movements, yet curiously,
it also partakes of these movements, and is in some essential sense grounded
in them. Rather than awareness from the 'outside looking in', this is more
akin to awareness from the 'inside looking out'.

The novel, even strange aspect of this
approach is the implication that we are
capable of conscious awareness that does
not in any fundamental way depend upon
the ego. In large part this seems strange
because our culture does not recognize
or assign value to awareness that is de-coupled from the ego, much less provide
tools and support for its development. In
fact, quite the opposite is more often the
case. We are trained from a very early age
to (a) produce this inner distinction between observer and observed, in which the
ego is felt to be the vital living source of
all thought and awareness (b) assume the
validity of this structure so thoroughly
that it passes out of conscious awareness
(c) invest total trust in its efficacy. But in
our current inquiry, this deep cultural conditioning is turned on its head: awareness
is now seen as primary; thoughts flow
from awareness; and the ego, far from
being a 'real thing', is merely a reflexive
display resulting from ingrained thought
patterns.

Interestingly enough, we have ample everyday evidence for awareness that is decoupled from the self-world
view. Moments of shocking beauty in the natural world, intense sexual communion, deep immersion in work or sport - all of these indicate a momentary loss of self in which we are nonetheless intensely aware. But these moments are fortuitous, and are all too easily romanticized or compartmentalized. When approached in this manner, such awareness is made into an object of desire by the ego, which invariably resurfaces and reflects longingly upon these
moments. In this way an ironic cycle of confusion is engendered, in which
the absence of the ego is desired by the ego.

Here however, we are suggesting
that this same heightened awareness can be accessed in the midst of our
most mundane and taxing moments. Bohm's perspective allows us to utilize
the generic appearance of the ego itself as a means of prompting awareness.
By using the body to bring to light the oscillation between the watcher/ego
and neurophysiological energy structures, we need no longer look to 'special
moments' for an opportunity to prompt basic awareness. In the act of watching
the watcher, awareness is fully present, at least momentarily.

Further,we can now see a new relationship between serial and holistic suspension of assumptions. It becomes
increasingly clear that the watcher and the assumption are one and the
same structure - they are both products of thinking. When the watcher
is thus no longer given privileged status as a central entity, but is
apprehended by awareness in the same way that any other assumption would
be, the distinction between serial suspension and holistic suspension
collapses. Every serial observation becomes a holistic observation; the
observation of each superficial assumption gives access to the entire
generic movement of the ego process, rather than to some isolated fragment
of this process.

From this inclusive Bohmian perspective,
we thus find that the body is the gateway to a remarkable wealth of unexpected
information. Clearly, if we marginalize and downplay the significance
of the body, we lose access to this information. But new information,in
and of itself, can be meaningless. What then are we to make of this new
information? What, if anything, does it have to tell us?

Meaning

"A change of meaning is a change of being."

'A change of meaning is a change
of being.' Increasingly in his latter years, Bohm was fond of broaching
and contemplating this statement. It is an enigmatic statement, not least
because the words meaning and being are notoriously difficult to define.
If asked to define them, we may come up short for a verbal definition,
yet still have an intuitive sense that we know what they mean, a kind
of feeling for what they actually refer to in our experience. At the very
least ,'meaning' seems to suggest something of value or significance
- people, places, events, or ideas that are in some way important in our
lives. And at the very least, 'being' seems to point to our actual existence,
our sense of presence and vitality.

In following through Bohm's proposal
that our self-image is inseparable from our view of the world, and that
this mutually arising 'self-world view' is the operant basis of our experience,
we now come to a pivotal question: If the demands of the self-world view
can dissipate, even if only in short bursts, what are the implications
for our meanings and our being?

Bohm has suggested one possibility -
that rather than clinging to fragmentation,
isolation, and territoriality, we might begin
to discern a participatory universe, one
in which conceptual boundaries and sharp
definitions are tools only for use in the
moment, rather than serving as crystallized identity structures. Perhaps in such
a participatory universe, communion and
fellowship are natural features of the
topography. Perhaps in such a universe,
intrinsic human warmth - currently
locked down or carefully channeled in
so many of us - is common currency, part of the shared meaning of nature and
society.

Am I willing to take risks for the possibility of new understanding, knowing there can be no money-back
guarantee?

If Bohm is even partly right when he
claims that the mind-body continuum is
concretely related to the deepest orders of
the universe3, then a change of meaning
may open us to these orders, bringing us
face to face with new aspects of being that
are only vaguely intimated by our current
world view. It is up to each individual to
then ask: Do I want to live the rest of my
life playing out yet another variation of
contemporary values? Am I willing to test
the boundaries of my self-world view, in
order to glimpse a larger, perhaps very
different universe? Am I willing to take risks for the possibility of new understanding, knowing there can be no money-back
guarantee?

Such questions lie at the heart of
Bohmian dialogue - not as fad or theory,
but as the deepest promptings of our
humanity. To the extent that questions of
this order are ignored in favor of technique, it is perhaps inevitable that Bohm's
vision of dialogue will degenerate into the
algorithms of the workshop and seminar
circuit. But if such questions can be revisited and revitalized, then this vision may
still find good soil and contribute to a new
and radical creativity.

Lee Nichol is obviously a serious person who has gone deeply into questions on life including ego.

I am, merely, to add, that Bohm in his later years, brought forth, a unity of physical sciences and psyche in his Implicate and Explicate Order, which deals insightfully into the questions of Ego, and a holistic order.
Obviously, discussion, if taken as an end by themselves lead one nowhere unless it is accompanied with an observation where ' observer is the observed, or incoming wave of the mind is also seen by t he mind as the outgoing mind. For that to take place, deep inner and outer hard work, as suggested by Bohm appears to be appropriate.
Since write up is an outcome of such a meditative implicate order, this response is merely intended as a supplement.
Ramesh Grover